County acts to Stem Crimes of Bias

FOUR months ago, after a spate of anti-Semitic vandalism in and around Westchester County, government officials met with Jewish and other religious leaders to coordinate a response to the racial and religious crimes.

Led by County Executive Andrew P. O'Rourke, they called for greater police protection and improved techniques in the investigation of bias-motivated incidents, stronger penalties for such crimes and community meetings and school assemblies focused on racism.

Earlier this month, with the incidents continuing, the members of the group met again. They were told that bias crimes now represented a new reporting category for the county police, that a bias-crime course had been added to the County Police Academy curriculum and that local police departments were being reminded to pay special attention to houses of worship on religious holidays.

Mr. O'Rourke said his office planned to produce a videotape for use in schools or on cable television dealing with the general theme of bias, and he said he would appoint a committee of nine county residents ''to conduct a six-month study of bias-related violence and make some recommendations to the government.'' At the same time, State Senator

Nicholas A. Spano, Republican of Yonkers, told the group that he and Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, Democrat of Greenburgh, were drafting a comprehensive package dealing with bias-related crimes that would include ''a central reporting system similar to the one that exists for child abuse.''

Even with the flurry of activity at state, county and local levels, participants in the meeting in Mr. O'Rourke's office expressed frustration over how little they felt they knew about anti-Semitism and other expressions of bias, and what to do about it.

Education in community groups and houses of worship as well as through the schools was seen as a principal method of countering bias. Some felt the educational thrust should be on a statewide basis and broadly based so that, as Rabbi Jacob Rubenstein of the Young Israel of Scarsdale Synagogue put it, ''this is not seen as merely a Jewish issue.''

There were complaints by members of the group over the way incidents are reported by the media, and even whether they should be reported. Rabbi Leonard Schofer of Temple Beth El in Yorktown Heights said, ''Subconsciously I feel we are enhancing the scrawling and scribbling of the anti-Semites and anti-blacks'' by adding to the coverage.

''The press was absolutely crummy with us in Yorktown,'' he said, by reporting the incident ''but ignoring the fact that the community turned out to say the guy's a kook, an outcast, and we don't want any part of it.'' Others also said they felt that a valuable service would be performed if the press would inform the public that those who committed bias-related crimes were not admired, ''that they are not the mainstream,'' Rabbi Schofer said. Rabbi Reuven Fink of Young Israel of New Rochelle Synagogue, which was defaced with swastikas three weeks ago, lauded the community support that he said was offered as soon as the incident was reported. He said in a later interview that he felt that such daubing and other anti-Semitic incidents should be publicized.

''If they are publicized, there is a public outcry that this won't be tolerated,'' he said, ''and in this way maybe people who do it will be seen as a fringe element.'' If incidents are not publicized, he said, vandals ''will think 'other people don't have the guts to do it, so we will.' ''

Some religious leaders indicated last week that the question of reporting such incidents was not always easily resolved. It came as a surprise to some rabbis, for example, that another synagogue in New Rochelle, Temple Anshe Shalom, a Conservative congregation, had suffered an attack of vandalism in the form of broken windows last month.

Rabbi Philip Weinberger said, ''We've had some minor bits of vandalism, but they were in no way as vicious or obvious'' as the desecration reported elsewhere in the county in recent months. ''We can't turn our back on these things, but there is such a thing as overstating a problem.''

He said that ''in our case the incident was not anti-Semitic,'' although he conceded that ''if this building is chosen by someone who is breaking windows it is not too difficult to see that it was chosen as a synagogue.''

The congregation, which includes a number of Holocaust survivors, ''has lived in peace in this community for 30 years,'' Rabbi Weinberger said, adding that ''we don't want to put labels where we don't want them to apply.'' But he said he would not have hesitated to report daubings such as those suffered by the Young Israel of New Rochelle synagogue.

The Rev. Robert MacLennan, senior minister of the Hitchcock Presbyterian Church in Scarsdale, which was burned to the ground by a suspected arsonist two years ago, said at the meeting called by Mr. O'Rourke that ''we need to make sure we don't have just another another study or a videotape on bias.''

''We need to know exactly and precisely who these people are, what they're about and where they come from,'' he said. ''We're rather frightened by whoever started the fire that destroyed our building. When we know what is happening, we'll know what to do about it.''

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Later, he said he wondered if the defacing of houses of worship was ''indeed motivated by anti-religious feelings, or are they symbols of an institution within our society'' that is under attack. Somebody ''may be anti-Semitic not because they're against Jews, but because they're dealing with the insecurity of their own religion,'' he said.

Hitchcock Presbyterian Church, with a congregation of 890, is being rebuilt. Mr. MacLennan said it should be ''closed in'' by December and completed by the fall of 1989. Services are being held in a theater-like room of an adjacent church building.

The Rev. Vernon Shannon of St. Catherine African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in New Rochelle said that he and others, including Rabbi Amiel Wohl of Temple Israel, also of New Rochelle, were visiting schools ''to talk about what it means to live in a diverse country with diverse people.'' He said they were also planning a conference in New Rochelle on overcoming racism and religious bias.

David Pollack of the Jewish Community Relations Council, the central coordinating body of 59 major Jewish organizations in the New York City area, said it was ''important that everything we do be put together, so we're sending a message that crimes of hate, crimes of bigotry, are not tolerated in our society.''

He spoke of a civil suit that his organization brought recently against youngsters who had ''knocked over a couple of hundred cemetery stones on Staten Island.'' The council ''received $18,000 in civil damages, roughly $5,000 per perpetrator,'' as a result of the legal action, he said.

''There's a message there,'' he added. ''A parent might let their kid run loose when all they can do is get a slap on the wrist or be sentenced to community service, but if it's going to cost them $5,000 they might think twice.''

He favored ''regularizing the reporting of bias-related crimes - are they going up or down - so we can react to it.'' He also suggested that the county's Commissioner of Public Safety Services, Anthony M. Mosca, meet regularly with a group of clergymen who ''might have some ideas'' he could use.

''For example, this coming November will be the 50th anniversary of Kristalnacht, the night of broken glass, when the SS came in and destroyed the synagogues in Germany,'' he said. ''We expect there will be a wave of anti-Semitic violence this November.''

Commissioner Mosca said the Crime Analysis Unit of the Public Safety Services Department had created an intelligence file ''on all bias crimes reported by local police jurisdictions'' and that the information would be available to local police departments.

Although some arrests had been made by local police agencies, he said, ''there has not been a discernible pattern that could point to a group of suspects or an individual.'' He also said that local police chiefs were not in favor of forming a ''task force-type unit on a countywide basis'' to fight bias-related crimes.

The task force, he said, would be similar to the ''Federal-county narcotics task force,'' which uses Federal, county and local police officers in the drive against illegal drugs. ''There was no sentiment for that approach'' in bias-related crimes, he said, because the police chiefs ''felt there is no demonstrated need for such a task force at this time.''

Sam Stein, president of the Westchester Jewish Conference, which coordinates the programs and services of the Westchester Jewish community, said his organization had received a grant from the state for ''an anti-bias information unit, which is essentially going to be used for education.'' He suggested that the county might want to ''participate with us in our program.''

Assemblyman Brodsky said the anti-bias state legislation that he and Senator Spano had proposed would make use of the state-operated Psychiatric Institute, which is affiliated with Columbia University in Manhattan, to examine the causes of bias-related crimes.

''We've already helped finance the Westchester Jewish Conference with $20,000 to construct nonsectarian anti-bias programs,'' Mr. Brodsky said. While this work may overlap county efforts, he said, it may help provide key information. ''The question that should be answered,'' he said, ''is: are we dealing with an outbreak of incidents or has the community climate changed?''

The proposed measure, which is similar in some ways to proposals being made by Governor Cuomo, ''creates a new crime of bias-related violence'' and calls for mandatory reporting of all bias-related crimes. It would also stiffen civil and criminal penalties for offenders.

Correction:

Sunday, Late City Final Edition An article on May 22 about racial and religious crimes incorrectly described Temple Anshe Shalom in New Rochelle. It is an Orthodox congregation.

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A version of this article appears in print on May 22, 1988, on Page WC12 of the National edition with the headline: County acts to Stem Crimes of Bias. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe